Sorry for the one-week holiday. But that means that there are more things to get to than I get to in a single post, so let's break it up this week, leading off with 3 running stories.
One, for those of you who haven't heard, Regina's Simon Bairu absolutely obliterated the Canadian 10,000m record last week at a meet at Stanford University. He ran 27:23 while knocking 13 seconds off Jeff Schiebler's 2001 record. Bairu got overshowed in the race because, A) he finished 5th in the race and B) the winner of the race broke the American record as well. Chris Solinsky, a 5k specialist who has never run a 10k race before, ran 26:59 to break the American record (previously set in 2001 by Meb Keflezighi) by 14 seconds. In doing so, he became the first non-African (and only 31st ever) to break the magical 27 minute mark.
Track and Field Videos on Flotrack
Even more remarkably for Solinsky - if you group all the men who have broken that magical 27 minute barrier, he is both the tallest and the heaviest. At 6"1 and 160 pounds, he is the first man over 6 feet to run that fast and the heaviest by a whopping 19 pounds! That's incredible. For the record, Bairu is 5'8" and about 130 pounds, so he fits in well with the average uber-fast Kenyan and Ethiopian.
You can see the race video and other Solinsky highlights on this page. Congrats to him. And before you feel too sorry for Bairu for getting overshadowed, consider Galen Rupp. He finished third in the same race, also broke the American record, but got none of the headlines of Solinsky and Bairu. That was one fast race...
Bairu has already had a great 2010 season, with a definitive win over Ryan Hall in Phoenix and now becoming the fastest Canadian ever over 10,000m. The next step is the marathon, but when and where he makes his marathon debut is still up in the air. Canada badly needs someone to break the 35-year old marathon record of Jerome Drayton (2:10:08). Can Bairu do it?
On the very same weekend that Athletics Canada was celebrating Bairu's new national record comes some news on Canadian athlete funding. Athletics Canada will pay world-class athletes (Top 16 in the world) like Bairu, Perdita Felicien, and their top teammates approximately $1500 per month in funding support. The trade-off is that a few national team athletes who aren't close to that Top-16 level could lose their funding. Instead, Athletic Canada will offer developmental funding to high school athletes who may be able to develop into those Top-16 athletes years down the road.
I'm a little torn, but Athletics Canada is trying to imitate some of the "Own The Podium" techniques that Winter Olympic sports have used over the past 6 years. They are trying to groom potential medal winners, and if that means putting more money into some events and less into other events and athletes.
Last up, a very good story around Mother's Day. We knew that Paula Radcliffe is pregnant, but I was surprised to find out that her spring training partner Kara Goucher was also pregnant. And in a nice coincidence, they are both due to the same day in late September. It also leaves them almost two full years to get back into shape for a run at an Olympic medal in August of 2012.
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